Million Dollar Micro Business by Tina Tower is a practical handbook that explains how to establish and run a digital course business step by step. In this insightful handbook, you will find practical information about coming up with your idea, officially starting a business, launching and growing it, and surviving the world of business. In her book, Tina Tower shares her personal experience as a course creator, business coach, speaker & winner of Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year.
Book Title: Million Dollar Micro Business: How to Turn Your Expertise Into a Digital Online Course
Authors: Tina Tower
Date of Reading: March 2022
Rating: 8/10
What Is Being Said In Detail:
In the book Million Dollar Micro Business, you’ll find everything you need to kickstart a business and run it smoothly. You will find the action steps at the end of every chapter starting from chapter 4 of this handbook, so that you can easily see what tasks you need to complete in order to reach your goals. What’s most important is that this book gives you the tools to embrace the new way to do business as an online digital course maker.
Start small
Chapter 1 helps to choose the idea for your digital business. The key takeaway is to go with your expertise or ask your family and friends what their opinion is of your best skills so that you select a topic in which you already have credibility.
Personal branding
Chapter 2 will help you to learn how to use your personal brand to reach your goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Time management
Chapter 3 discusses how important it is to invest your time in activities that create value rather than get distracted by overthinking and how to find time in a busy world.
Overcome your fear
Chapter 4 discusses how to overcome fear and why it is so important. You will find here a simple exercise which gives you a way to tap into your fear right away and control it.
Success story: James Wedmore — Business By Design
Wedmore’s story describes how he came into making a business out of online courses and how it has grown and changed over time.
Get clear on your idea
Chapter 5 discusses how to create a winning business idea by understanding what your target market is, what you’re building, why you’re building it, and why you’re going after it.
Set up your new business
Chapter 6 outlines the steps you will need to take to start your business, set your targets and budget, and establish your business officially. Business names, registration procedures, business structures, banking and accounting software, and all the details you need to know when operating in the digital space are among the important areas it covers.
Map out your signature course
Chapter 7 describes what should be covered in your online signature course, what it should be called, and how it will be structured. You will find here a complete course creation road map.
Develop your course content
Chapter 8 explains what you’ll need to record your first online course in a relaxed way without letting perfection get in the way. It also gives tips on how to determine the best camera angle when filming videos, and when to film your screen and when to film your face.
Design your point of difference
Chapter 9 illustrates how to define and identify your perfect client in every detail to pinpoint your competitive edge and use it to make business decisions.
Design your brand and what you stand for
Chapter 10 goes into detail on how to make your brand a reality – creating a logo, a landing page, social media profiles, and blog posts.
Nail your first offer and program
Chapter 11 discusses how to package your newly created online course into a saleable product and price it without feeling like an impostor. As a result, all kinds of psychological issues will be raised, including placing a value on your knowledge and results.
Success story: Kayse Morris — The CEO Teacher
This is a true story about a former teacher who started selling her teaching resources online back in 2013 and turned it into a seven-figure business when other teachers started asking how they could do what she does and sell their teaching resources online full time.
Build your digital learning website
Chapter 12 will help you to put your brand into action as well as design your website. There are useful tips on what type of content to include, how to write a sales page and landing page, and, most importantly, how to optimise for student success.
Content marketing
Chapter 13 is devoted to helping you grow a solid, strong, and long-lasting business through content marketing. It describes how to grow a profitable online business using the Value Marketing Method, which’s designed by the author.
Build your list
Chapter 14 offers some tips on how to create an effective to-do list to get your business moving forward, and how to focus on the things that help you perform better, no matter how far they take you from your comfort zone.
Sell your services from a virtual stage
Chapter 15 gives tips on how to run a webinar and sell from that webinar your courses to win you more clients than just about any other marketing activity you can do.
Success story: Tracy Harris — Mums With Hustle
It’s the story of Tracy Harris, founder of Mums With Hustle and the Instagram course Hashtag Hustle, who shares her insights on how to empower big-hearted women to use Instagram as a tool to create a life and business for themselves.
The comparison trap
Chapter 16 explores the approaches that can enable you to develop a mindset that will allow you to focus on improving yourself while using the example of others for inspiration and encouragement rather than as a source of discouragement over what you wish you could be or have.
Embrace automation and software
Chapter 17 discusses how automating business processes will increase your productivity and offers some of the top software solutions you can use to automate and delegate in your online course business.
Become a systems nerd
Chapter 18 explains how getting along with modern technology can help your business thrive and why using software that’s easy and intuitive to utilize is essential. You will learn how to allocate time to create content, serve clients, and interact with employees throughout the day rather than wasting it on mundane tasks that you have to do.
Your micro team
Chapter 19 describes how to set up a team and manage it in an online course business, including how to hire people who align with your vision, mission, and core values since these are often more important than skills for your team.
Outsourcing vs in-house team
Chapter 20 discusses how to maintain the right balance between in-house staff and outsourced freelancers to make your online course business run smoothly and what challenges you might face along the way.
Ditch the guilt
Chapter 21 offers advice on how to embrace success with confidence and strength of mind by acknowledging that you are making a positive impact in the world and that you deserve to be well rewarded for your efforts. The chapter talks about how you could feel guilty if you’re on a roll instead of appreciating what you’ve accomplished, and sabotage it because it’s just too good to be true.
Success story: Clint Salter — Dance Studio Owners Association
This is the story of Clint Salter, an award-winning entrepreneur, business development strategist, and best-selling author who launched his first dance studio business at 16 and by age 28 had founded and sold three companies. He was named the Youngest Senior Celebrity Agent in Australia. Here he shares how he overcame barriers and came up with an idea, created a growing business and always managed to keep his finger on the pulse without beating himself up.
Manage your money: cash flow vs profit
Chapter 22 gives you practical advice on how to allocate your money wisely by creating your own expenses pie chart.
Say no to protect your energy
Chapter 23 discusses how to conserve your energy and value by focusing on what matters most. It suggests creating your own “happy list” in order to protect your energy because it is indeed the most important asset of your business.
Design life your way
Chapter 24 is dedicated to setting goals for both your business and your lifestyle and keeping yourself motivated to go chase them.
Where to from here?
Chapter 25 gives advice on how to manage your energy and prepare for your first launch and how to get the most out of that precious learning experience.
Success story: Denise Duffield-Thomas — Chillpreneur
This is a story of a woman named Denise Duffield-Thomas who is a money mentor for the new generation of online entrepreneurs who want to earn money and change the world. She empowers women to charge premium prices, letting go of their fear of money and enabling them to attain a first-class lifestyle.
Most Important Keywords, Sentences, Quotes:
INTRODUCTION by Ray Kurzweil
“Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean that’s the thing you should be doing. Always go with what sets your heart on fire! Life is too short to stick at something that makes you want to stick skewers into your eyeballs.”
“If your clients are constantly asking you for something, you may want to think about giving it to them.”
CHAPTER 1 – Start small
“If you’re looking at how to begin, my advice is to start with what you know. Ask friends and family, ‘What do you think I’m best at?’ If you’re going with what you already know, your credibility in that area is probably already established.” If you’re looking at how to begin, my advice is to start with what you know. Ask friends and family, ‘What do you think I’m best at?’ If you’re going with what you already know, your credibility in that area is probably already established.
CHAPTER 2 – Personal branding
“Having a personal brand doesn’t mean having no privacy.”
“Decide now, as you embark on building your personal brand, what parts of your life you’re happy to share and what parts you’d prefer to keep private. […]. It’s up to you to decide how much of yourself you want the world to see.”
“When people speak about you when you’re not in the room, what will they say? The personal brand you’ve crafted and projected—that’s what will do the talking for you.”
CHAPTER 3 – Time management
“Every time you make a time decision, you’re reinforcing what’s most important to you. Every time you say yes to something, you unconsciously say no to something else. You can do absolutely anything, but not everything.”
CHAPTER 4 – Overcome your fear
“If you’re committed, it’s not a matter of if but of when, and how many lessons you’ll need to learn from failed experiments before you get there!”
Success story: James Wedmore — Business By Design
“If you are afraid of being judged, or of what people will say or think, remember that they are just as afraid as you. And when you can come to that place on your own, you’ll find it’s a very, very powerful and dangerous place to be.”
“The reality is that goal you created is outside of your control, because you don’t have control over the thoughts, habits, actions and behaviour of complete strangers on the internet. You can influence them but not control them.”
“If you’re trailing the market, you’re losing. It’s not until you get ahead and lead the market that you win.”
“The first thing I would say is when I’m creating content about my life, it’s never from a place of what do I want to share? or what will persuade people to like me? but rather, what about my life will provide value for somebody else?”
“What I want is to help people, and if this helps them, then I want it in front of them so it can help them, and if it can help more people, I want to get it out in front of more people”
“The first thing that had to go was this strategy that most of us have, which is that in some way we’ve equated our work ethic and our effort with our deservedness. If I work enough, if I work harder, then I will be deserving of success. I decided I never ever wanted that to be the case. So what I tell my students today is, you should never work hard to be deserving of what you want. Work hard, because your clients deserve the best. They deserve the best of you. But it has nothing to do with your being more deserving.”
“That’s because the only things that will drive the business forward exist way outside your comfort zone. And what is that at its core? It’s making an offer, asking people for money, selling. Maybe I can do this without selling. But you can’t. You have to sell. You have to ask for money. And if you don’t ask for money, no one’s gonna give it to you.”
CHAPTER 5 – Get clear on your idea
“The first thing to look at is what you’re good at, which may not be what you’re actually trained in. Sometimes what you’re good at isn’t what you really enjoy either, so that isn’t going to be a winner. We need to find the winning combo for you. This means taking a look at your history and the skill set you’ve built over time.”
“What’s more, it will be what people associate with you when they talk about you. You’ll be asked questions about it all the time. This is why you have to love it. If you do something that you’re good at and that will make money, but you don’t wholeheartedly believe in it, you won’t enjoy long-term success, and you’ll most likely be miserable. […]. So you need to be able to, and to want to, talk about it all day long.”
“If you find something effortless that other people find quite complex, you’re onto a winner. Your job in the online course you create is to take what you find simple and second nature and interpret it for other people. You break down the complexity so it’s both easy for you to teach and easy for someone to pick up and run with.”
“If you get stuck on this, send an email to 20 close contacts or do a social media post simply asking people to let you know what they think you’re best at.”
“Don’t settle for something you trained for just because you don’t want to ‘throw away’ your education, though it will all likely contribute to what you eventually do. If you feel uninspired by the course your career is taking, it’s probably not the one for you.”
“No matter what you do, and how much research you do, once it’s out there you’ll want to change it, adapt it, tweak it as you move forward. The market will validate it for you. What we want to do is to get the first offer out into the world as quickly and simply as possible so we can get that validation, then refine, improve and scale it”
“Look at your market and potential clients and read between the lines. Pay attention to what they’re saying they want, but pay particular attention to the main problem they actually need solved and the value that is most important to them. You know your work intimately—you’re the best at it—and you know your clients and what they most want.”
“Think about the transformation promise of your course. If a client completed your course and achieved the goal you’ve set, how would that affect their life?”
“Having clearly defined goals provides a roadmap for where I want to go and how I’m going to get there, a path to follow and a destination, rather than flying blind, flailing about and wasting time trying to think about what you want to do next.”
“When you’re working, ask yourself, would it actually make a difference if I didn’t do this? And if your answer is no, stop. Focus your time on the highest returning activities and you will have the headspace to perform as your business needs you to, and to make good decisions, spot opportunities and take advantage of them.”
CHAPTER 6 – Set up your new business
“For business success, a good rule of thumb is to spend only what’s vitally necessary while making as much money as you can. As with time management, spend on the things that matter, and forget the rest. If it boosts your brand and/or your sales, then it’s a worthwhile investment. If not, always question whether it’s vital or just something you want. Remember, revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity.”
CHAPTER 7 – Map out your signature course
“Humans are social beings who crave connection with like-minded souls.”
CHAPTER 8 – Develop your course content
“When creating your first course, choose a course theme song that will fire you up, helping you to feel strong and capable, and play it before each of your recordings”
“If you’re feeling apprehensive about filming yourself, one way around it is to tell yourself it’s only a practice run. You’re never going to publish this one, so you can hit record and just practise it. By taking the pressure off yourself, you may just find that at least one of those practice runs is pretty darn good.”
“I think you should be authentically you. If you do a daily blow dry and wear fake eyelashes whenever you go out, then awesome, do that in the video. But don’t aim to look like someone you’re not, because it means you’re not being congruent. If you’re not being congruent, you’ll feel uncomfortable and you won’t present as well as you would if you were being yourself.”
“The way to make filming easy and achievable is just to be yourself. Show up as you are, so whenever you feel inspired and in the zone you can grab your equipment, sit down and rock and roll. Be presentable, of course, but be you.”
“If you’re continually striving for the unattainable you’ll never get to launch this baby out into the world. Go for progress over perfection”
“The act of purchasing your course is quite a personal one. People will only do so if they agree with you and believe your values align with theirs and you communicate in a way that makes sense to them.”
“You’re never going to please everyone so make sure you’re presenting in a way that pleases you”
“Online learning means taking out any fluff. […] In online learning you get to the point as quickly as possible. Your students are coming to you for tangible, actionable information that they can implement to achieve their desired goal, so don’t waste 10 minutes talking about anything that’s not going to help them get there.”
“When you’re starting out, don’t spend money you don’t have to. Create the set you need for your audience and budget.”
“In some ways, it’s even harder to teach people online than in person, because when online they’re surrounded by far more distractions.”
“It’s important to be yourself, but an illuminated version of your best self”
“People will judge you no matter what, so forget about what other people say or think, because you’ll never really know what that is or what’s going on in their lives. Have fun sharing what’s burning in you that you know will add value for others. Let your light shine to help others to shine brighter too.”
CHAPTER 9 – Design your point of difference
“Being clear about your purpose and super specific about who you serve will help you to clarify and amplify your message.”
“When developing a course, pick one person to build it for. You’re creating this course because you know there’s a need for it. People are asking you for it. Who is asking you? Pick that person right now and create it for them. Talk directly to them. With every module you write, with every lesson you record and resource you produce, create it for them.”
“Moving to a new level or new belief often means leaving old, familiar ones behind, and that can be uncomfortable and scary. Although your client wants what you’ve got, if the program is going to be life altering, you will experience resistance and will need to allow for that so you can mitigate those objections and gently guide people towards their desired goal.”
CHAPTER 10 – Design your brand and what you stand for
“To establish brand recognition, your branding needs to be consistently visible through everything you produce. When someone scrolls through Instagram or checks out a workbook of yours or spots your sticker on the back of a client’s laptop, what they see needs to be recognisably yours and to embody all the qualities you want to be known for. Even your tone of voice and the clothes you wear can play a part in your brand.”
“As you continue on your online business journey, you’ll find it often comes down to being open to accepting that you’re going to do things before you feel completely ready. You’ll do things before you’re completely sure of what you’re doing. Accept that there’s room for improvement and commit to continuous improvement as you progress.”
“You turn your dreams into reality by making a plan of action steps, implementing each one, and continuing to evolve and improve as you gain more skills. Knowledge means nothing without action.”
“Choose to make life easy for yourself and remember that done is better than perfect.”
“When you find it difficult to do something you need to do to help your business to grow, know that there’s always an easier way—you just need to find it.”
CHAPTER 11 – Nail your first offer and program
“Competition is great, because it means there is already a market for your course. No one else in the world has your personality, your unique life experience or your communication style. You could be exactly what someone out there is waiting for right now to get them from where they are to where they want to be. Each person is attracted to a different sort of learning delivery, and your unique style and offering could be just what that person is looking for.”
“Do things your way and fill the needs and gaps you can see in your market.”
Success story: Kayse Morris — The CEO Teacher
“So I had to find the ace in the hole, or what I like to call my Willy Wonka golden ticket. I had to figure out what I could learn that would give me a bit of an advantage. It turned out to be search engine optimisation, and that’s a trick I teach all my students today.”
“Let’s get this thing running like a well-oiled machine before we try to make it bigger than it is.”
“The one thing I encourage my students to do, though, is to learn the things you’re going to pay people to do for you, like Facebook ads, because then you can have an educated conversation, and get the results you want.”
“So I bought a huge Postit poster and I encourage everyone to start this way, get all the colours and sticky notes you want and take every idea in your head for your course and write them down on sticky notes and put them up on that poster board, then stare at it for three weeks, a month, however long it takes for you to start saying, I think these things go together. I think I can clump these things together. That’s how it all started for me. Then unit one went up on the wall. And I started grabbing those sticky notes and putting them there. That’s how I fleshed out the course.”
CHAPTER 12 – Build your digital learning website
“In the business world, though, a heap of text can work really well. Humans buy from humans, so inject your own personality into its pages (website). Use images and other visual elements that convey your message and support your brand. Choose pictures of you and your own images over too many stock images so your personality shines through.”
“Do you want to play small and watch while others are brave enough to show their vulnerabilities, put themselves out there and win? Don’t watch on. Jump into the game and play to win.”
“You’ll need help to push through, and you need to be present with people in your course to address their doubts. For those doing a course on changing a habit or learning something new, change is always difficult. And it’s always scary. You need to have a process in place to be able to help people through that resistance.”
“No matter how successful you are, keep personally connecting with people. Make sure you have a mechanism that’s going to be sustainable as your business grows.”
CHAPTER 13 – Content marketing
“To create quality content, ask yourself, ‘Why would they care and why would they share?’ Create for your perfect client, and you’ll find that your perfect client will want to consume it because it’s relevant, interesting and entertaining to them.”
“The social media space is changing constantly, so rather than trying to cover all platforms, pick the two where your clients hang out most, and learn to be really good at those. You should still create profiles to bookmark on all of the other platforms, but they’ll be on the periphery.”
“Keep it in mind, because appearing on TV as a regular guest expert on a topic will supersize your credibility and trust levels. If you know someone who knows someone, which is how these things most often go, start chatting!”
“The hardest part of all this is getting started and building the reputation to get invited or to pitch yourself when you have yet to gain any experience. Everyone starts somewhere, so just start small. […]. There are many ways to build experience. You just need to go out and create your own opportunities. When you’re beginning, no one is coming looking for you, so go get it.”
“Nearly every industry has an awards program. People outside of your industry may have no idea it exists or any interest in it. That’s totally okay, because we’re only creating for the people who do care. If there’s an industry award that your clients respect, you need to win that.”
“[…] what holds too many people back from success is their own mindset. They feel they’re not good enough, so they don’t put themselves out there. There’s always this underlying fear that they’ll be discovered as a fraud, so they lay low. We may know intellectually that we’re good enough, but it’s a natural fear that a lot of us carry, including myself if I don’t keep alert to it. You started this journey because you have a yearning in your heart to spread what you know and to make a positive difference in the world. You definitely know enough and are good enough to do the thing you dream of.”
“If your industry recognises accreditation, then get that certification so you have the credibility to do the thing you love to do.”
CHAPTER 14 – Build your list
“Once you hit go, you know it’s the time of reckoning. You’ll either sink or swim, and you put yourself at risk of confirming your deep-seated fear that you suck. Let me assure you, you definitely don’t suck, and if your launch is not well received, then remember, it’s all a curious experiment. Review pragmatically what you did, figure out what you missed, tweak it and go again. If you try and fail, give yourself a high five. Because most people won’t even try.”
“Having an employee mentality means you tend to sit back, waiting to be paid. If this is you, I suggest you set this book aside now and go and get yourself a job. But if you are willing to build it, push beyond your comfort zone and chase your dreams boldly, there’s no limit to what you can create.”
“The easiest way to build a list is to offer a really valuable opt-in—a lead magnet of some sort.”
“The main thing to remember when list building is to be respectful. People get so many unsolicited emails these days; if they see you as spamming, you’ll just end up with a tonne of unsubscribes. Don’t give out information that’s not valuable. As long as you’re providing valuable content, your clients will look forward to receiving your emails.”
CHAPTER 15 – Sell your services from a virtual stage
“We’re always going to feel uncomfortable doing something in public we’ve never done before, but the only way to get over that is to just do it.”
“In a webinar you tell people the ‘what’ but you don’t show them the ‘how’. They need to be a paying member to access that.”
“Don’t ever be someone else in order to get the result you want. You may see someone you admire run a webinar and think that’s the style you need to adopt. If it’s not your style, it won’t work. You will only perform at your best when you’re being authentically you. People will feel it, so embrace your own style and let your passion shine through.”
“There’s no shame in going the extra mile to win your customers. Don’t sit back and wait for people to come to you. Put your foot on the accelerator so you can achieve your goals more quickly.”
Success story: Tracy Harris — Mums With Hustle
“The big thing that I see holding people back from launching their course or membership is this belief that everything has to be perfect. […] People can move so far away from why they’re creating this course and the impact that they can actually have on their audience and that can be their biggest block.”
“If you look at your course as taking your students or your participants from where they are now to where they want to be, or the transformation that they will experience by the end of your course or program, and then just take one small little slice of that and create something really short and simple, that is going to give your audience a quick win.”
“When it comes to Instagram marketing strategy, you really need to focus on two things: connection and community. Because when you focus on those, you move from marketing as a means, to marketing as a way to start connecting with your audience through shared experiences, through conversations that unite not only your audience or your potential customer with yourself, but also unite the audience with each other. That’s a really powerful way to create a movement that builds a sense of belonging, and a sense of family. Treat your Instagram marketing strategy as a connection.”
CHAPTER 16 – The comparison trap
“You have your own unique experience that shapes who you are as a human and what your priorities are going forward. Stay true to that.”
“If you have a list of expectations covering all the things you think you should be and do as a human, ask yourself where they came from. Make sure that what you’re striving for is actually what you want.”
CHAPTER 17 – Embrace automation and software
“The key to software and automation is finding things you love that help you to perform in your business to your optimal level.”
CHAPTER 18 – Become a systems nerd
“Great systems allow you and your team to perform work faster and more accurately, and free up brain space to do what you do best—human creativity and delivery.”
“Systems don’t kill creativity; they free up your brain and thereby invite more inspiration.”
“As your business progresses, your systems and procedures list will grow, which is why you need to enlist clever software that’s easy to use and easy to search.”
CHAPTER 19 – Your micro team
“You can do anything but not everything, so choose what’s going to best leverage your time to help you achieve your goals.”
“It’s a fine line between over-hiring and under-hiring, so I apply a formula. If your next goal is to outsource your copywriting, say, then work out what that would cost for 6 to 12 weeks, then when you hit that buffer, make the hire. As the business grows, keep doing that until you’re doing only the things you love and only you can do. Do what you have to do until you can afford to do what you want to do.”
“Values alignment and attitude are often more important than skills for an in-house micro team member. Hire people who align with your vision, mission and core values.”
CHAPTER 20 – Outsourcing vs in-house team
“Once the expectations of the role and the outcomes are clearly set so team members know exactly what’s required of them in order to do their job really well, I don’t mind whether they choose to do it in or around normal business hours.”
“The point of cultivating your team is to enable you to live the life you want while also scaling the business, serving more people and increasing profits. Create an environment in which your people can thrive so your clients thrive too.”
CHAPTER 21 – Ditch the guilt
“By giving our services away free or cheaply, and staying small, it can feel like we’re part of the club. But pricing is perception. We charge more and people think we’re worth more. There’s a limit of course, but if we’re discounting and undercharging at every turn, people won’t value what we’re creating.”
“As an entrepreneur, your life is anything but ordinary. There is no clear separation between your work day and your real life—it’s all intertwined, all part of this life you’ve dreamt up, so you can have the freedom to live life according to your own design.”
“Guilt can be a healthy emotion when it brings to the surface something we’ve done that’s incongruent with our values. It also can surface when it’s time to reassess our values and beliefs and embrace the awesomeness within.”
“The only opinion that truly matters is your own. Face up to your feelings and explore them. Analyse your ideas around success, and make sure they’re your ideas and not someone else’s. You don’t have anything to prove to anyone other than yourself. Listen to your own inner voice and wisdom, and be brave enough to stand in your power.”
“Success doesn’t depend on luck, or simply working your arse off. It depends on making the decisions to do the things in your business that you know are going to produce the biggest results, even when they take you way out of your comfort zone.”
“You know that what you’re doing is making a positive impact in the world and that you deserve to be beautifully financially rewarded for it.”
Success story: Clint Salter — Dance Studio Owners Association
“That has been a blessing and a gift—the self-belief built along the way came from being a very different kind of kid, one who wasn’t like any of the other kids in the playground.”
“That’s how I do everything now in our business. Everything is an experiment. It also allows you not to create too much attachment to the idea.”
CHAPTER 22 – Manage your money: cash flow vs profit
“Your course on its own is not a business. It is the product and one component of your business. To be successful in online education, you need to build a business around your course and really get to know your numbers.”
“Think about how you’ll choose to allocate your money, then create your own expenses pie.”
“There is an infinite amount of money in the world and it’s continually being printed and circulated. Find your own special blend of how you’re going to serve the world and be financially compensated, then how you’re going to spend your money to live the life you choose for the rest of your days.”
CHAPTER 23 – Say no to protect your energy
“Trying to do everything and be all things to all people leads inevitably to burnout, and then you’re just as useless as the ‘g’ in lasagne.”
“When there’s so much to do, and you love your work, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of overworking. […] Your work will suffer from workaholic tendencies and you won’t even realise it. It can feel very frustrating and counterproductive to take a break when you have so much you want to do. But when you do, you will come back firing! Your brain will be fresh and energised, you’ll have amazing ideas and unstoppable self-belief, and you’ll take on the world like the champion you are.”
“Working with your mind and body in harmony and feeling the work flow from you is one of the greatest feelings. Figuring out your own unique equilibrium that empowers you to find your flow more quickly will become your absolute superpower.”
“Before you embark on your new business career, make a list of all the things that keep you mentally healthy—I call it my ‘happy list’—and ensure you do at least one thing from the list every day.”
“You’re not superhuman, and nor should you want to be. There comes a point when you will need to recognise that you’re running around like a crazy person doing what others want you to do, and you need to switch to saying no to protect your energy. No more doing work for free. No more sessions where people can ‘pick your brain’. No more under-charging for your services. You decide on your boundaries, then stick to them.”
CHAPTER 24 – Design life your way
“Creating a high-growth million dollar micro business does not depend on your being trapped behind your computer to slog out long days while you live on bad food, coffee and alcohol. The success of your micro business depends on your being able to distinguish the important from the unimportant, and to work strategically on those activities that create the biggest results in the shortest amount of time.”
“Create your goals for both your business and your lifestyle, then go chase them”
CHAPTER 25 – Where to from here?
“Choose life! Choose to be one of the few brave enough to step up and truly shine. Then you can encourage others to do the same.”
Success story: Denise Duffield — Chillpreneur
“I like the batching thing. You might have one little task that you can’t do, so you can get someone on Fiverr to do it. I like those little micro-outsourcing things, one for practice and two for speed and cost. And not having that ongoing expense is really key.”
“…I think people need to get is that the basics are always the same, you know. I still have to market. I have to be a storyteller. That’s going to be true no matter what technology or marketing systems we have.”
Book Review (Personal Opinion):
In this handbook, I found a lot of tips that can be used to start an online course business. If you are not familiar with what digital tools you can use and how the digital space operates, this is an excellent guideline and will save you time and money. However, I couldn’t recommend this as reading material to gain inspiration or insights from. You will probably not enjoy reading this book page by page, but if you are looking for an answer to a certain question, you can check the table of contents or the section with recommended resources.
Rating: 8/10
This Book Is For:
- Digital entrepreneurs
- Educators interested in working online
- Anybody who wants to do business online
If You Want To Learn More
Here’s an interview with Tina Tower in which he discusses topics from Million Dollar Micro Business:
Jaime Masters podcast
How I’ve Implemented The Ideas From The Book
This book contains so much information that I couldn’t decide where to begin. When I felt overwhelmed by the opportunities that were opening up to me, I put the book aside. After giving myself a quick break, I followed my gut instinct and described my ideal client and what I would do for her. So now I’ve got a bunch of points, lessons both from my education and my work experience that I can’t wait to share with her. Oh yeah, I’m making a course map now.
One Small Actionable Step You Can Do
Look in the book for the fear-setting exercise and do it. There are no pre-requisitites or limitations to this exercise. You can do it at any time and for any reason, whether it’s making that call you’re afraid to make or quitting the job that you secretly hate.
